Laredo: "Home" for the Holidays

 

The predominant theme in this year's cards is: peace, hope, joy and love

As we've said before, home is where your stuff is. Right now that is in Laredo, as we had planned to spend the holiday season, Thanksgiving to the New Year, with Emily. (We have plans right now to try for Europe again in March, fingers crossed. We have no plans for between New Year and then, as the new variant has everything in limbo again.) In case you're wondering, now that we've returned, I can confirm everything in Texas remains "Texas size," as I learned when I recently bought some combs! 

Our hoped for plans, send good vibes! Emily said the combs are the size of horse combs! 😂

For anyone who doesn't know yet, we have changed our physical address to Emily's place, so please reach out if you need an update. We truly appreciate cousin Jim letting us use his address for so long, with the pandemic dragging on, leaving us "homeless" longer than we ever anticipated. We love spending time with Jim, and Billibob and Buddy, and appreciate the many times he has hosted us in the past two years!

It's good to know we can all live together amicably, you know, in case we have have to "Golden Girl" it some time in the future when we're all ancient!

Upon arrival in Laredo, we had fun walking around campus and seeing some of the beautiful holiday decorations. The university encourages community members to use the decorations as background for holiday photos.

And, a visit to campus almost always guarantees a deer and javelina sighting! We also had a Marina twin sighting, more rare here in Texas than in California. 

Now that we're settled in one spot for a bit, we've been playing catch up. I finally got my hair cut; it was starting to look pandemic style again! I had my last haircut at a salon in Florida. The stylist didn't listen to what I wanted at all. I really prefer going to a barber. The place I get my hair cut here in Laredo always does a nice job, and they had the cutest Christmas tree!

In addition to the many, many address changes, I went for my Texas driver's license (worst photo ever!), which allowed me to get my new library card. The library had a really pretty tree and this cute 'fireplace.' The librarian was very nice, and they seem to have a good collection. But, I'm going to miss my Lee County System!

John and I had our boosters, which knocked us each out of commission for a bit (I've come to calling these the 'lost days'). Emily, who was boosted a while back since she's in education, has been doing some holiday baking. She did the Carnation Magic Cookie bars this year with pretzels instead of nuts and 1/2 butterscotch / 1/2 chocolate chips. Also, chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

We're gonna need a little butter!

John's made his very first ever IRA distribution. Officially old! I completed a few smaller genealogy projects for John's line, one maternal and one paternal.

 

Speaking of genealogy, H&M finally released a photo of my newest 21st cousin. 😁 She's precious! 

I've continued my ongoing quest to fluency in Italian. Duolingo kindly sent some year end statistics. I only wish that my actual level of fluency matched how much time and effort I put in. It's hard to learn a language at this age, especially when practice opportunities are so few and far between. I hope to get better when immersed.

Another fun year-end statistic I received was from Hulu. It describes our watching DNA on their platform, but I think it's pretty accurate across all of the streaming services we use. That is impressive, but also scary when you begin to think about algorithms and all of their implications! Feel free to drop some suggestions in the comments for any shows or movies that would fit our DNA.

Speaking of media, we had our annual viewing of Concert for George, especially poignant since this was the 20th anniversary of George's passing. We also had a Beatles bonus this year, as The Beatles Get Back was finally released. Thanks to a friend (you know who you are) who gave us a Disney+ login so we could watch this; it was very much enjoyed! We're also looking forward to plans in a few days to see The Matrix Resurrections! I'm actually willing to venture into a theatre for this and only this!

December brought a gift from Olivia and Dhani Harrison: a new video for My Sweet Lord! It's very fun and recommended if you haven't yet seen it. I always thought Give Me Love was my favorite George song, but I've decided it is My Sweet Lord. I can't help but feel good whenever I hear it.

It was fun to be here while Emily wrapped up her first semester of teaching at Texas A&M International University. We were able to attend the Guitar Ensemble's holiday concert (click link to go to the concert) and meet some of her colleagues.

TAMIU Guitar Ensemble. Emily enjoyed working with Dr. Gilberto Soto and the guitar students.

Emily hosted her first Thanksgiving. We enjoyed meeting her colleagues and friends, Ginger and Daniel, who joined us for the festivities.

Emily had a great first semester, and her students gave her high marks on her evaluations. For our friends in academics, I thought this was something interesting to share. The evaluation system creates a 'word cloud' from students' write-in comments. Cool!

Proud parents we were when we learned that Emily was recently asked to be featured in a university PR piece about her sitar playing! The piece was featured this month in TAMIU's 2021 Annual Report. 

The piece featured two edited videos, one of Emily performing a sitar improvisation and one interview with her about teaching music. The interview video really captures her true love and excitement for being a college professor. She definitely has what I call the 'teaching gene,' and we're thrilled that she has a career that she can be passionate about and in which she finds much personal meaning.

Sitar Improvisation

A Conversation with Dr. Emily Vanchella

We did some traveling this month as well. John had to make an overnight trip to Houston for his Italian passport appointment (still waiting on that to arrive), and we had our annual family holiday cruise, which departed from Galveston. Even though both places are in Texas, they are still in the 5-7 hour drive range! I'll write more about the cruise in my Pandemic Cruising II blog (still under construction), but here's a few  photos from our trip ...

En route to the port, we had to make a stop at Buc-ee's so Emily could experience this wonder. This meme I found perfectly describes it! She bought a Christmas ornament to commemorate her visit. (The additional photo is the pretty Christmas tree that was in our hotel.)

Also en route to the port, the drive took us through Beeville, Texas, where we stopped for lunch this round. On previous trips, we had noticed the horse and buggy caution signs and wondered about that. This time, mystery solved, when we saw this interesting sight:

Taking out the horse and buggy for a visit to the local Tractor Supply

As they say, inquiring minds want to know, so I did some research as we continued on. Turns out that Beeville is home to the only Amish community in Texas. I think next time we pass through we need to stop at the local Amish convenience store!

Back at the homestead, we've enjoyed a couple of drives around town to check out holiday decorations. Two things we've noticed specific to Laredo: 1) There are many more nativities than we've ever seen; 2) Many here like to have what we've termed door garlands. The doors are really done up! On one drive, a family was out working on their decorations, so we rolled down the window to tell them how pretty their door was. The mom said, "We've got to have that special place to take pictures." She and her mom and daughter seemed happy at our compliments, and she said she was going to tell her husband, because he had worked really hard on the lights. 

An inflatable nativity - I've never seen that before! A lovely door.

Theme of Joy, as with the cards. Ya think people want some joy?!

The Ginormous Decorations

 I admire a homeowner that commits to putting lights on a tall palm like that! A beautiful tree by one of the city swimming pools. The tree in front of the Civic Center (where we also learned about The Paisanos). Santa peeking over the top of a bank.

A Christmas Cactus, a first! Always appreciate a nod to our favorite holiday movies, this time National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

In one of the neighborhoods we drove through, all of the streets are named after authors. Very fun, although I'm not certain I'd want to live on Thomas Harris Drive!

Peanuts fun at the local Raising Cane's

My two personal favorites for overall design. Guess I like the lit walkways!

Well, this blog has grown much longer than I expected, so I will wrap up. I guess we have been busy?! Wishing you a Merry Christmas Eve Eve or a Happy Festivus and a wonderful holiday season. We (Vanchella Vagabonds + 1 AKA Team Sierra) hope that 2022 brings everyone peace, joy, and happiness!

Lovely card from friends Kristen and Maddie